Three points that particularly stand out:

1) Forget the stereotypes:  Binge drinking is not a “poor person’s problem”

The income group containing the most binge drinkers, at 20.2 percent, is those whose annual income is more than $75,000. However, the income group that binge drinking affects most often is those who make less than $25,000 a year.

This means that the contention made by alcohol interests and their allies – that alcohol taxes are unfairly regressive – is neither accurate nor honest.  Wealthier people are more likely to binge drink, while low-income people are often forced to bear the brunt of alcohol-related harm due to the concentration of alcohol outlets in the most deprived neighborhoods and other factors.

2) The data demand a closer look

Although New York State wasn’t recognized as one of the highest states in terms of percentage of adults who binge drink, it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem here. The CDC study identifies a percentage ranging from 18.7 percent to 25.6 percent as having the highest proportion of binge drinkers per state. A study by Excellus BlueCross BlueShield found that the Western New York region has about a 22 percent binge drinking rate. When comparing the CDC data to the data here in Western New York, we would fall under the ‘high binge drinking’ category.

If we look only at NYS averages we miss the fact that some areas – most notably large swaths of Western NY and the North Country – are closer to high-binge states (such as those in New England and the Upper Midwest) in their binge drinking rates.

3) It’s time for full-cost accounting on alcohol

Binge drinking, or drinking at all, might not seem like a problem or cause for concern to many people, but when data suggests that each year 80,000 Americans die because of alcohol, or that that drinking costs an already-suffering economy $223.5 billion, we all should be concerned.

Many times our notions of economic development are short-sighted at best, self-defeating at worst.  Unless we carefully analyze the health impacts of our policy decisions, we actually risk making the economic conditions of our neighborhoods worse.  Considering the role of excessive alcohol consumption in chronic diseases and admissions to Level-1 Trauma centers, and the burden of Medicaid costs on state and county budgets, we can’t afford get-rich-quick schemes which threaten the health and safety of our communities.

Wisconsin Senate Bill 358  takes that approach to its ridiculous extreme by allowing alcohol beverage licensees to sue parents of kids under 18 who procure alcohol in their establishments.  The licensee would be entitled to $1,000 (plus costs and “reasonable” attorney fees) which is actually more than the fine ($500) the state levies against those who sell to minors.

If the sponsors of this bill really want to tackle underage drinking, they should increase the price of alcohol and investigate the alcohol industry’s practices of luring kids with products like marshmallow-flavored vodka and saturating kids with digital alcohol marketing.   But, then again, that might not go over well with their buddies at the Tavern League of Wisconsin.

Reference:

Mosher, J. F. (1995). The merchants, not the customers: resisting the alcohol and tobacco industries’ strategy to blame young people for illegal alcohol and tobacco sales. Journal of Public Health Policy, 16(4), 412-432.

The companies see alcoholic beverages as a growth opportunity after years of flat sales, said David Henkes, a vice president with the Chicago-based food research firm Technomic. “Alcohol is one of those things that is extremely profitable to the operator,” he said.

Just one more example of the erosion of the firewall between a well-regulated alcohol control system, and a pathogenic culture of nearly unlimited access and availability.  Add it to the list of  alcohol-serving movie theaters, laundromat/bar combos, and kiddie restaurants that serve just enough alcohol to trigger grown-up violence.

Brochure available here.

According to the Sourcewatch site for the Center for Media and Democracy, alcohol companies which have been involved with ALEC include Anheuser-Busch, Coors, and Miller.  Currently, Diageo’s Vice President of Government and Trade Relations, Kenneth Lane, sits on the ALEC Private Enterprise Board.

Diageo, like many other major alcohol producers, publicly celebrates “diversity” with its employee resource groups like the African Heritage Employees at Diageo (A.H.E.A.D.) and the [GLBT] Rainbow Network.  Yet, in light of Diageo’s affiliation with anti-democratic groups like ALEC, this embrace of diversity appears to be just another tactic to soften up target markets.

To The Editor:

David White’s call for deregulation of our alcohol control system (“Wholesale Robbery…,” 4/4) is telling for its comparison of direct shipping of alcohol to that for books and shoes.  In truth, as the World Health Organization has stated, alcohol is “no ordinary commodity” and thus cannot be treated like a pair of Manolo Blahnik pumps or a Patricia Cornwell paperback.  We are, after all, talking about the third leading root cause of death in the US and the leading preventable cause of birth defects and intellectual disabilities.

In fact, the three-tier system of alcohol distribution was put in place precisely because of this product’s special nature.  But the powerful multinational corporations who dominate alcohol production (conveniently omitted from Mr. White’s narrative) and their retail allies will brook no limit on profits, and work feverishly to deregulate our alcohol control systems through litigation and lobbying.

We need to remember this before we drink Mr. White’s deregulation kool-aid.

Robert S. Pezzolesi, MPH
New York Center for Alcohol Policy Solutions

Complicating the picture is the fact that the Times is in the online wine business through the New York Times Wine Club.

The significance of brand preference in relation to underage drinking reminded me of the tragic death of Kaitlin Kozlowski, a 16-year-old who was killed in a single-vehicle crash in the Town of Clay in Onondaga County, New York in 2005.  The driver of the automobile was 17 and alcohol-impaired, and the victim’s best friend.

The Syracuse Post-Standard had reported that Kaitlin “liked to hang out with friends, watch movies, and party, which included drinking Captain Morgan rum and Bud Light beer.”  In fact, friends had placed cans of Bud Light at a makeshift memorial for Kaitlin.  Captain Morgan was implicated by police at the scene of the fateful party.

Just a few years earlier, we had worked to get a local billboard company to abide by an industry voluntary “code” which stated that billboards advertising products illegal to minors would be placed at least 500 feet away from schools and houses of worship.  We found that the code had been routinely violated.  The two brands most often in violation?  Captain Morgan and Bud Light.

The brand-preference study can move us another step beyond blaming kids and parents and begin to understand the media environment that squeezes kids into  its mold.  If, as some industry apologists assert, alcohol advertising has no effect on drinking behaviors but only serves to tweak brand preference among adults who already drink, then there should be no correlation between advertising expenditures and youth alcohol brand preference.  And the alcohol industry should have nothing to fear from this study.

Of note, the vice president of a prominent alcohol industry trade organization was seen at the session, furiously taking notes.

Reference:

McAndrew, M. (2005, January 31). “Teens grieve for friend killed in post-party crash.”   Syracuse Post-Standard, p. A1.

In attacking the Marin Institute’s timely report on the mad rush to dismantle control state systems, DISCUS resorts to a tired pejorative that has, nonetheless, been ubiquitous in the current contentious political climate: “special interest.”

photo by Steve Wilhelm

And, yet, which is more of a “special interest” group:  a non-profit working to improve public health and public safety, or a trade organization that aggressively works for the “normalization” of its product, while funding character attacks on legitimate public health practitioners?

It should also be noted that the Marin Institute does not have its own Political Action Committee  (PAC).

MMS’s [U.S. Minerals Management Services] acquiescence stemmed from the unusual relationship it had cultivated with industry. Directed by law to “meet the nation’s energy needs,” the agency chose to pursued [sic] that mission by declaring itself publicly and formally as industry’s partner.

Can industries that profit from potentially harmful products and practices truly be “partners” with government and non-governmental organizations that work to stem their harms?  Or will the asymmetries invariably produce some form of regulatory capture?

As Richard Daynard notes “you can’t partner with someone who has a totally different set of goals than you …” (quoted in Simon, 2006, p. 303).

These are important questions to consider in the alcohol arena, as well, with alcohol trade associations and social aspects organizations trumpeting “self-regulation” and “partnership” as alternatives to smart, tough regulation.

With further deregulation and co-optation (packaged as “partnership”)  we can expect the alcohol equivalent of the Gulf oil disaster.

References, and for further information:

American Medical Association (2002).  Partner or foe? The alcohol industry, youth alcohol problems, and alcohol policy strategies [policy briefing paper].  Chicago:  American Medical Association.

Babor, T.F. (2009).  Alcohol policy, academic medicine and the alcoholic beverage industry [PowerPoint presentation].  Lecture delivered at Institute of Medicine as Profession, November 2, 2009.

Eilperin, J. (2010, August 25).  “Seeking answers in MMS’s flawed culture.”  Washington Post, A1.

Jernigan, D. (2009).  Confusion, contention and collaboration: Alcohol producers and global public health [PowerPoint presentation].  Lecture delivered at Institute of Medicine as Profession, November 2, 2009.

Simon, M. (2006).  Appetite for profit: How the food industry undermines our health and how to fight back. New York: Nation Books.

They argue that any protection of state-based regulation is unnecessary, because, in reality, there is no “deregulation” (it is a “supposed threat”).

This from the trade organization that bragged about their “unprecedented series of market modernization victories that rolled back Blue Laws across the nation.”  And just last month, they cheered the fact that 43 states “eased their tasting laws” as “part of a larger movement to modernize state alcohol laws to cater to consumer demand …”

So the removal of laws and regulations protecting public health and safety is not “deregulation” (that has become an ugly word thanks to Wall Street and oil well disasters).  Instead, it is “modernization.”

Of course, this kind of linguistic legerdemain is nothing new; it’s the stock in trade of corporate public relations.  Toxic Sludge Is Good For You describes in detail how the sewage treatment plant lobby tried to relabel toxic sewage sludge as “biosolids” and promote its use as a crop fertilizer.

In a similar way, DISCUS wants to relabel toxic deregulation and sell it as “modernization.”

But that doesn’t make it any less toxic.